Duxbury Systems leads the world in software for braille. The Duxbury Braille Translator (DBT) and MegaDots, are used by virtually all of the world’s leading braille publishers. No one supports more languages than Duxbury Systems — DBT supports grade 1 and grade 2 translation in English, Unified English Braille (UEB), Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Malaysian, Swedish, and other languages. Our software can produce contracted and uncontracted braille, mathematics, and technical braille.

To download a demonstration or upgrade version of 12.3 for Windows, please click on this link – dbt-12.3

(Please contact us if you wish a demonstration version for Apple Mac)

If you would like to download the new Duxbury 2018 braille calendar, please click on this link – Calendar 2018

Improvements to the UEB translator (Unified English Braille) (see below)

New embossers and embosser improvements (see below)

TactileView integration repaired.

Many internal efficiency improvements.

Language improvements (see below)

English UEB

Now supports document-specific Typeform Indicators as defined in the RUEBRules of Unified English Braille Section 9 for inkprint attributes that carry meanings the braille reader needs to know about . A range of such indicators can be defined such as the use of Script Font, Text Color or Highlight Color, as well as Drop Shadow and Outline Text. See the new user interface in the Global: Word-Importer dialogue. (See also a Word file example here DBT_Typeform_Indicators.docx)

Certain currency expressions, when marked as “technical notation,” no longer give rise to an unnecessary grade one word indicator.

When a sequence of single capitalized letters is treated as a passage, the last such letter is included in the passage.

If [ps]…[pe] (i.e. superscript) codes immediately surround a trademark symbol (U+2122), they are now discarded as redundant.

Contractions of several uncommon medical terms have been improved.

New Embossers and Embosser Fixes

Support for the Braillo 300 S2 has been added to DBT.

TranSend SE is now supported on Romeo 60 and Juliet 120.

JAWS Improvements

JAWS now has better support for the DBT Spell Checker.

When reading a line as braille characters, for multiple spaces JAWS now says the number of spaces instead of speaking each space individually.

The JAWS script files for DBT include several new keyboard commands:

Alt+Comma – once, speaks the current column position; twice, speaks the number of remaining characters on the line.

Alt+Period – once, speaks the number of characters on the line; twice, speaks the number of spaces on the left.Alt+Slash: speaks the last word on the line.

Alt+Semicolon – new keystroke to toggle between the PC cursor and the JAWS cursor at the start of the translated line.No digits are missing when you press Alt+9 to hear location information.

JAWS consistently speaks the new page number when you move from one page to another in a DBT document.

For those using JAWS with refreshable braille using grade 2 translation, JAWS no longer says “computer braille” when DBT switches to a braille document window and the JAWS translation setting for refreshable braille changes to computer braille. Those announcements could be frequent, and users found them annoying.

Math Improvements

For translating into Nemeth Code in UEB context, we have solved a problem that caused intermittent errors at the start of math sections, such as a missing numeric indicator for a number at the start of a Nemeth Code section.

When importing a LaTeX file (from Scientific Notebook or another source) to create Nemeth Code in a UEB context, DBT now correctly suppresses the terminating and starting Nemeth indicators where there should be a “pass through in math” section; it also puts in the “one-word switch” where appropriate. When importing math for Nemeth Code in UEB context, embedded text in a math expression that occurs inside a pass through in math section no longer causes problems.

The translated line no longer drops spaces in certain locations. Specifically, use of the math style now does not cause a space to be dropped on the translated line.

When importing a LaTeX file that uses the command \includegraphics, the DBT document now gives the filename of the graphics file.

User Interface

The Global, Word-Importer dialogue has a new option for mapping font characteristics to transcriber-defined Typeform Indicators for English UEB. (See Global: Word Importer)

Selecting the correct language for Han character import now happens automatically with the choice of a DBT template. (Previously this selection always had to be done manually from the Global, Import Options dialogue, and that option is still allowed if the user wishes to continue to specify the choice directly.)DBT updates documents immediately when certain global options are changed.

Miscellaneous Changes

We have improved the display of the translated line in formatted print documents for languages that introduce discretionary hyphens.

We have added two spaces to the formatted-view translated line at each place where a tab code is present in the markup.

We have eliminated the introduction of a bullet and space at the start of some “numbered” paragraphs in .docx files, where Word itself does not show them.

Treatment of blank cells in columnar tables has been amended to come more completely into compliance with BANA Guidelines.

The BANA Listed Table format now conforms to BANA Formats 2011 (11.16.1.e), so that for each row, the first element is formatted as a cell-5 heading. (That first element is normally labeled with the column heading.)A Byte Order Mark, if present, is now stripped from the start of Unicode text imports, particularly when imported through DBT’s formatted text importer.

DBT now adds codes to control spacing within the Exact Translation style when importing Word .doc and .docx files.